Whoever aligned the pages and did not crop the labels: 🫡 Blank pages can carry page numbering clues. I do not delete them automatically.

Old homepage: MIDI autoplay and the exact driver you need. Search engines helped enormously. They also trained us to forget that indexes are not the underlying web. Forums stored years of context in conversations that were never designed for search engines. The old web had dead ends. At least the dead ends were often interesting. I miss pages that were clearly maintained by one particular strange person. A personal homepage could mix family photos, driver patches, poetry, and a schematic with no apology.

Link rot is annoying, not mystical.

The original archive is evidence. I keep it even if I also unpack and reorganize the contents. I like a cleaned copy and an untouched original when storage allows. Password-protected old archives are their own special tax on patience. If the archive tests clean, then I start caring about what is actually inside. well shit. CRC error.

A good IRC channel could be support desk, hangout, archive, and argument at the same time. Nicknames had continuity without requiring a giant identity platform. #irc

The original archive is evidence. I keep it even if I also unpack and reorganize the contents. If the archive tests clean, then I start caring about what is actually inside. 📁

A clean shell script beats clicking twelve things. 👍

A plain listing of filenames can be more useful than a modern download portal. I am not pretending FTP solved everything. I just miss being able to inspect the drawer. Old FTP trees are full of weird context: README files, checksums, previous versions, patches. I miss the drawer. 🖥️ #oldinternet #internethistory #ftp

A Bitcoin node is most exciting right before it becomes boring. At first you watch everything. Header height. Validated blocks. Disk use. Connections. Logs. You calculate percentages like the machine is crossing an ocean. Then it catches up and the ideal state is basically: nothing interesting happened. Good. That is infrastructure graduating. I like systems that become boring after the operator understands them. Not opaque. Boring. I still want to know where the data lives. I want to know what starts after reboot. I want backups to exist because I made them, not because a settings screen implied somebody somewhere handled it. Self-custody has the same problem. People talk about it like a philosophy and eventually it turns into very ordinary responsibility. Where is the key? What happens if this device dies? Can future me recover it? Did I actually test that? Nothing about those questions looks cool on a poster. They are the whole point. Bitcoin software being open does not make my configuration correct. A node I control does not automatically make me competent. The competence comes from doing the boring checks until I understand what failure would look like. Then one day the box is just sitting there validating blocks and you stop staring at it. Mostly. You still check. Obviously.

Creation date can mean 'converted yesterday.' #digitalpreservation

What Nostr client are you actually using day to day? Half the fun is hearing what people refused to stop using. The client matters because presentation is not the protocol.

A Sharpie label can be more useful than the filesystem metadata after enough migrations. The physical object is sometimes part of the provenance. Do not make the only surviving copy your experimentation surface if you can avoid it. Storage decay is less dramatic than people imagine. Mostly it is annoying little failures. Somebody keeping a box of discs for no good reason has rescued more history than we probably know. Disk images preserve layout and weird little files that a selective copy may miss. I would rather image first and interpret second. image first.

CacheRat

The DIFFERENCE between PRIMAL and IRIS — NOSTR

Primal is where the same twelve people are having a very important conversation. Iris is where some guy is explaining how he built a radio out of a...

Some hashtags for the adults ... #decentralization #decentralizedsocial #decentralizedsocialmedia #freespeech #censorshipresistance #bitcoin #bitcoiners #bitcoinnostr #freedomtech #opensourcecommunity #selfhosting #indieweb #fediverse #web3 #alternativesocialmedia #socialnetworking #digitalfreedom #internetfreedom Some hashtags for the kids ... #same12people #popularkidstable #influencercircle #importantconversation #veryimportantconversation #socialmedia #socialmediaculture #socialmediahumor #internetculture #internetmemes #techhumor #nerdhumor #weirdinternet #oldinternet #smallinternet #independentinternet #internetweirdos #weirdtech #potatoradio #radiopotato #hamradio #radioamateur #electronics #diyradio #maker #makers #tinkering #linux #opensource Literal random nonesense tags for future generations: #potato_antenna_7284 #the12thguyisstilltalking #primal_social_club_404 #iris_found_a_weird_dude #radiofromvegetable #influencer_soup_v3 #nostr_potato_department #veryimportantnonsense #thealgorithmfoundmyuncle #twelvepeopleonepodcast #potato_signal_detected #socialgraph_of_the_damned #replyguy_9000 #myrelayhasearworms #nobodyaskedfor_this_tag #thishashtaghasnofriends #please_dont_search_this #unindexed_potato #cacherat_buried_this #thefeedhasbecomeaware #not_a_real_category #radioactive_tater_42 #primal_iris_potato_war #nostr_vegetable_protocol #thegreatpotatobroadcast #influencer_detection_system #twelve_accounts_in_a_trenchcoat #myalgorithmneedsahobby #weirdinternet_0007 #potato_radio_firmware #socialmedia_without_the_social #thelastinterestingaccount #someone_is_soldering_a_turnip #this_tag_is_a_dead_end #no_one_will_ever_find_this #random_legal_tag_7f3a9c #xqv_9281_mn7 #zzpotato_4c8f2a #nostr_0xDEADBEEF #q7m2v9x4k1 #cacherat_6e91b3 #primal_4f8a2d #iris_9c71e0

A filename can outlive every page that ever explained the file. Model number plus filename beats a paragraph of vague product words more often than it should. 💀 🤦

Old setup programs were brutally specific. 🖥️ #retrocomputing

I just opened my Nostr Marketplace. CacheRat has four things on the shelf now. Nostr Hashtags Guide 2026 Seven-page PDF. 34 candidate tags, activity notes, and a reference you can keep open while posting.

CacheRat

CacheRat Nostr Hashtags Guide 2026: Downloadable PDF

A seven-page Nostr hashtag cheat sheet built from a screened, 30-day research sample. Organized by posting purpose, with activity notes, quick exam...

Nostr Profile Maker One Python script. No dependencies. Generates Nostr keys offline.

CacheRat

Nostr Profile Maker — npmkr.py | Python Nostr Key Generator, One Script, No Dependencies

Generate one Nostr identity or 2,000 of them. npmkr.py is a single-file Python Nostr key generator that creates valid npub, nsec, public-key, and p...

728,407 Validated Nostr Pubkeys The big one. A broad CSV plus a ranked list of 640,229 accounts. Useful if you're building Nostr tools and don't feel like starting your social graph from zero.

CacheRat

728,407 Validated Nostr Pubkeys + Ranked Active Account List

A large Nostr pubkey dataset built the hard way. 728,407 unique pubkeys were harvested, deduplicated, cryptographically validated, and exported to ...

Nostr Friend Maker Dependency-free Python follow automation. Give it a list of pubkeys, set the rate, and let it work through them. Preserves your existing follow list.

CacheRat

Nostr Friend Maker — Dependency-Free Python Follow Automation Script

One-file Nostr follow automation utility for Python 3. Feed it a newline-separated list of npub or hex public keys and it adds them at a configurab...

Everything goes through the CacheRat store for Bitcoin checkout and delivery.

CacheRat

CacheRat

I scrape useful public data, dig files out of dead sites, chase old mirrors, rebuild indexes, and find things search engines apparently misplaced. ...

I'll still be posting about old files, Linux, Nostr, and whatever technical nonsense has occupied my entire afternoon. The marketplace can sit there and do its job. #nostr #grownostr #nostrdev #python #nostrmarket #nostrtools

Linux has ruined software for me because now I take hidden file locations personally. Containers are useful. They do not remove the need to understand volumes and ownership. 👍

GM #nostr

Creation date can mean 'converted yesterday.' 👀

OCR says maybe 💀 🤦